Friday, July 28, 2006

More nitpicking ...

Following some tweaking of the solar panel meshes by Castorp, we finally got around of animating the unfolding of one of them last night ... with some success. I write some as there's something that still doesn't sounds quiet right when I look at the folded panels and compare it to what I was expecting them to look like, based on the few low-res pictures I have. The whole solar panel is composed of 4 segments, two of which are composed of sub-segments allowing the whole panel to bend as seen on the picture bellow:

The segments arrangement on the panel is such that the inner and outer segments have the same length, while the two middle ones having the same length but slightly longer than the two others. Note, that the panels used on the early Soyuz were different from the one still in use today. The ASTP's Soyuz was the first one to use the redesigned ones. The following pictures shows that quiet well:

Now, let see how it look in our add-on when the panel is folded:

What I was expecting was to have the the location where the segment 1&2 bend to be at the same height than for the segment 1&4 ... which obviously isn't the case ...

Also, the folding of the outer segment (the 4th one) seems to be somewhat non logical ... as there is enough room to fit in on the other side, against the radiator (that grey thing behind) ... But then it is the way it looks on all pictures I could find:

Now, I'm wondering ... maybe I got the unfolding sequence wrong? Time to study some more the animation made by the guy from russianspaceweb.com ... even if it's for a Soyuz TM ... On the other hand these solar panels are much simpler than the older ones ... and there's no longer the radiator under ...